Inside of the Competitive World of PC Gaming

2/20/2013 10:56PM

Owen Mahoney of Nexon - one of the first companies to offer free games online - talks to the WSJ's Yumiko Ono about how the growing mobile gaming industry is affecting business and the difficulties in maintaining creativity.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... she ... ten years ago you may be the first ... company to come up with every team that ... I'm sure it didn't take long for other people to seek it out in China ... how ... high ... being ... coming up with new teams Adam was created that that's still better than your competitor ... well um ... one in the way so ... you're right I mean Korea's always been this massively competitive environment for the exams ... and so is China ... answer some increases we operate on ... Saurabh accretion in with the but the way that we figured out as one of the ... sort of ruthlessly experimental ... again about me the meaning so for sample of ... the game isn't doing well let's killer and then lets you know try try something completely new life into these three items and that's that's how we came up with all the right ... so we usually try from a beating in perspective instead of building a gay mistress like somebody else's we'd be trying a lot of different things in a lot of those experiments to work out well ... and then we cut it into the next one but we don't put all ranks in one basket ... but the person designs gay ... I think it's I suppose that I think they're being polite there will be wanting to go public on and use gravity body piercings ... it ... up ... I'm by far the ... most formally dressed person company and ... I'm I'm dressing whatever I am so you can tell a connected to the people come in during daylight hours are they not our goal is to get all types ... of what was actually it's really interesting ... video game design is the really interesting art form because it is really know people talk about the combination of art and science ... N C get a lot of great artists are also great engine years ... on from a management perspective that's a tough group to manage ... you can imagine sometimes because ... engineers can be hard to manage an artist or art ... Center building our ... and ... the kinds of debates are weak internally sometimes are people who ... um ... create great art ... and ... and they actually just want to create great art and others ... just wanna have a huge audience and what we wanted to do is create great art ... that also has a huge audience and most video game maker sets a common denominator if you're if you're making great art he wanted to teach you have a lot of fans ... aam but the across the videogame industry not just us that so that's a tough battle it's you know and ... aam ... the way we approach it is we we tried this new experimentation ... alot ... most baby makers ... on the games business because they stop ... the Red Lord of the Rings years ago ... an aura that saw blade runner ... twenty years ago said what I was I wanna make the videogame and before that ... and aam ... and so they if you feed them that's ... and you can to help them address a large audience and that's that's pretty compelling for them ... aam with the conflicts really happen is ... you know we hear that the journalist equals ... they contain very financially rewarding but it's not what your game designers Nexus really got business in southern on low but the game and that's it that's a tough and limiting our is another question what are some of the games to store it ... up ... it's like some of cable TV it seems to have appeal to the of the delay in the parade now ... what why or why or ... somebody gets disrupted ... we know it's interesting um violent I think is that the person yet but so violent as the borrowing billions are part of the ... video game history and um ... I think it's because in game design ... in a shooting in job paying crashing into things ... um ... what was it was appealing and easy to design for especially into the ... realm and also appeals to him sometime none of my mind when two sons for cars crashing into ... things in each other and so on ... says the point of history ... I am the twenty from CBS which is also a games but I'm ... happy scene about impacting than a Christmas video games are played on ... the matter ... I'm so busy we noted the impact of a doll's head of console gaming ... know if at all is it affecting PC gaming and and and a ... massive multiplayer online today I think it's a great question that's probably the big existential question about the dance right now ... aam ... what we see there there's there server promise that ... that a lot of people call that the people coming out of PC ... and into mobile in fact what we see in our day I'm not sure but of course and are designed to keep your coming out of PC PC gamers also play mobile games I play ... Angry Birds ... I play our games ... but I'll still put its ... admit it ... but keeping with the Nikkei was down about a dozen Alaska said ... um but it's up but Mobile is bringing a massive new audience here I think of my older sister she's ... over fifty ... she never would be caught dead playing at it again because the games I've ... played growing up but she still playing Angry Birds on her phone ... so that's clearly happening in in is you look at the number you know you just walk down the streets in Tokyo and see people all types all genders all ages ... playing ... playing puzzle games on the phone ... so it sort of ... it's sort of throwing people I think in terms of what ... is really going on in the game since tree in ... our view is that the most interesting part is immersive games games he'll play for a long time it's sort of like YouTube versus along for movie or a comment from versus a ... couple of long book um ... and so both have their place and both are interesting but a lot of people think that one is dying and others going up ...